Keystone passes climate review

Saturday

Feb 1, 2014 at 12:01 AMFeb 1, 2014 at 2:44 PM

WASHINGTON - A long-awaited environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline released yesterday by the State Department found that the project would have a negligible impact on climate change, bolstering the case for the project as it heads to the White House for a decision on its construction.

WASHINGTON — A long-awaited environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline released yesterday by the State Department found that the project would have a negligible impact on climate change, bolstering the case for the project as it heads to the White House for a decision on its construction.

During a sweeping speech on climate change last June, President Barack Obama said his main criterion for approving the pipeline was that it not significantly worsen the problem of carbon pollution.

The 1,179-mile pipeline would travel through the heart of the United States, carrying oil derived from tar sands in Hardisty, Alberta, in western Canada, to a hub in Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries in Texas. It would cross Montana and South Dakota before reaching Nebraska. An existing spur runs through Kansas and Oklahoma to Texas.

Because the pipeline would need to cross a U.S. border, it needs a so-called presidential permit from the State Department. Obama has said that he will make the final decision.

A senior State Department official was careful to note that the environmental review took no position on whether to approve the pipeline, saying, “Its analysis is only one factor in the final determination, which will also weigh national security, foreign policy and economic issues.”

Canadian tar sands are likely to be developed regardless of U.S. action on the pipeline, the report said, and other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries — including rail, trucks and barges — would be worse for climate change.

Federal agencies have 90 days to submit comments about the final assessment, while a 30-day public comment period runs concurrently. Then the president will have to determine whether Keystone XL is in the “national interest” based on those analyses, which will include one from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been critical of the State Department’s previous reviews.

The president has no deadline to issue a decision on the pipeline’s permit. Given the contentiousness of the issue, Obama might wait until after November’s elections. A decision on the permit was expected in late 2011 but was postponed until after the 2012 presidential election, in part because of widely held concerns that the original environmental-impact statement did not adequately assess the pipeline’s effect on greenhouse-gas emissions or on a huge aquifer in Nebraska.

Supporters of Keystone XL said the final environmental assessment should clear the way to getting a permit.

“Five years, five federal reviews, dozens of public meetings, over a million comments and one conclusion — the Keystone XL pipeline is safe for the environment,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an oil-industry trade group. “… This long-awaited project should now be swiftly approved.”

But environmentalists and other advocates have criticized earlier drafts of the study for failing to take into account the project’s total impact on greenhouse-gas emissions. They also point out that the State Department’s inspector general is conducting an inquiry into whether the contractor tasked with the study, Environmental Resources Management, failed to disclose recent work it did for TransCanada, the company proposing to build Keystone XL, resulting in a conflict of interest.

In Canada, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver welcomed the report and said of the pipeline: “ The benefits to the U.S. and Canada are clear. We await a timely decision.

“The choice for the United States is clear: oil supply from a reliable, environmentally responsible friend and neighbor or from unstable sources with similar or higher greenhouse-gas emissions and lesser environmental standards.”